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I have had it ever since, and if I say that its behaviour has always been worthy of the gracious manner of its coming to me, I shall not be guilty of exaggeration.
It has only one fault; it is a shocking bad speller.
A typical example of a good war-play was The Man Who Stayed At Home which ran for a long time at the old Royalty Theatre in Dean Street, Soho. The name part, played by Dennis Eadie, told of a man who was always being gibed at for not enlisting and going out to serve his country as every fit man should. He bore all this with exemplary patience which was mistaken for cowardice, but it turned out in the end that he had a wireless-set concealed in his fireplace and was doing noble and valuable secret service work with it. We bought the rights in this play and made a good film of it, and I have always been very grateful to it for it was the means of introducing my greatest colleague, Henry Edwards, to the Walton Studios, where he worked finely and very successfully until the end. He was carrying a not very important part in this play but he did it so supremely well that I was very glad to be able to persuade him to join us. All his acting work was excellent and he very soon took on production as well, and afterwards started a series of productions of his own side by side with me. Chrissie White became the leading lady in many of his pictures in the same way as Alma Taylor was usually mine, but we changed about occasionally when the films we were making seemed better suited that way.
In our screen version of The Man Who Stayed At Home which was produced by me, Dennis Eadie played his own part but most of the other parts were taken by the members of our stock -company. I don't think Eadie was very happy with us, which is worth remarking for that did not often happen. But the film was successful and helped to confirm the theory that stage plays were good material for us to work upon.
Nevertheless I still clung to the belief that they were not the only or even necessarily the best foundation for picture-plays. It is an argument which has never yet been settled, for there are always examples bobbing up to prove or disprove it either way.
The Pipes of Pan was founded upon a pretty fanciful little picture or picture postcard which was popular in the shops at the time. I produced the film, which was of no great importance but it comes to my memory now because of an ingenious trick which
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